A look at the current state of DirectX 12

The amount of hype that build up before the launch of DirectX 12 was probably unparalleled. This new API made highlights with all the hot buzzwords of the moment, in particular the claims that its low-level/close-to-metal access to GPUs would result in tremendous performance gains.

DirectX 12 has been on the market for over a year now and so far the benefits haven't materialized yet. DSO Gaming takes a critical look at the current state of DirectX 12 and concludes the current implementations of DX12 are truly awful and proof that the new API isn't a magical cure that make everything better.

What really surprised us was Battlefield 1’s underwhelming performance in DX12. DICE was the team responsible for Mantle, so we kind of expected truly awesome things from it. After all, the team know how to “write to the metal” and get amazing results from current-gen graphics cards (from both vendors). Instead, Battlefield 1’s DX12 mode runs worse than DX11 on both NVIDIA’s and AMD’s graphics cards. And for the record, Battlefield 4 ran better in Mantle than in DX11.

Most DirectX 12 titles for the PC platform seems to have something in common, they almost all run slower than the DirectX 11 variant, while offering visuals that look exactly the same. The reason for this is that DirectX 12 is too different, to get the most of it developers will have to rewrite significant chunks of their game engines and so far no one is willing to do this.